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Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution (LMS) delivers powerful network lifecycle management by simplifying the configuration, administration, monitoring, and troubleshooting of Cisco networks. This innovative solution offers end-to-end management for business critical technologies and services, such as, medianet, TrustSec, and EnergyWise. Cisco Prime LMS 4.1 improves the overall user experience, providing new workflows that are built on functional partitioning and that align the product with the way network operators do their jobs. Once installed, prepackaged monitoring and troubleshooting dashboards provide actionable information to quickly isolate and fix network problems before they affect services. Configuring and deploying updates to the network has never been easier with the Template Center, which now incorporates Cisco Smart Business Architecture (SBA) templates that are based upon Cisco Validated Designs, simplifying platform and technology rollout and reducing the chance for errors. Work Centers provide a single area where guided workflows give step-by-step instructions to help operators quickly provision, monitor, and manage new Cisco value-added technologies and solutions, such as medianet, EnergyWise, TrustSec/Identity, Auto Smartports, and Smart Install. See Figure 1.

Figure 1. Cisco Prime LMS 4.1

About Cisco Prime Products

The Cisco Prime portfolio of enterprise and service provider management offerings supports integrated lifecycle management of Cisco architectures and technologies based on a network services management foundation. Built on an intuitive workflow-oriented user experience, Cisco Prime products help increase IT productivity and reduce operations costs through innovative management solutions for the network services, infrastructure, and endpoints. For more information about Cisco Prime, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/prime.

A New Management Paradigm

Cisco Prime LMS has evolved from a collection of individual products into a seamless set of integrated management functions based upon the way network managers do their work. Organizing the product based on management function simplifies the overall user experience by reducing the need to cross application boundaries to complete a specific management task. Workflows are self-contained and all required functionality is maintained within a functional area. Table 1 lists the major functional areas.

•Cisco best practices configuration templates - deploy full or partial configurations based on Cisco validated designs and Cisco Smart Business Architecture recommendations

•Dynamic guided workflows reduce chance for errors

•Extensible configuration library, new updates, and configurations templates can easily be downloaded from Cisco.com, including the SBA templates

•Integration with Cisco Configuration Professional to assist with multidevice deployment of configuration files generated by Cisco Configuration Professional through LMS configuration templates and scheduler

Getting started and improved workflows simplify application setup and administration

•All administrative functions for setting up and configuring the application are centralized for easier access

Using Cisco Prime LMS 4.1 to Manage Borderless Networks

The ability to manage any Cisco platform, anytime, anywhere, to deploy new Cisco technologies and services, and to integrate with third-party management platforms is key to lowering overall operating expenses (OpEx) while improving network availability. Cisco Prime LMS 4.1 will help simplify managing borderless networks in the following ways:

Reduces operating expenses: Network management has traditionally been burdened with being too complex and expensive to maintain. Required tasks such as installing management software, configuring and setting up the platform, and discovering the network, coupled with the need for multiple disparate applications with high maintenance costs, made manageability a time-consuming and expensive proposition for most enterprise customers. As a result, many customers gave up, walked away frustrated, and failed to use the features available or to realize any reduction in their overall OpEx. Cisco Prime LMS 4.1 provides a getting started guided workflow to simplify the initial setup, reducing the time required to operationalize the product. Automonitoring features help enable immediate value right out of the box, providing real-time dashboards for quickly isolating and troubleshooting network- and device-related problems immediately after the product is installed.

Simplifies deployment of new technologies: Cisco provides unparalleled value in the features and capabilities of its hardware platforms that further differentiate Cisco from the competition. Difficulties with deploying and managing differentiated features have made it challenging for some customers to take full advantage of the value. With the delivery of new Cisco switching and routing platforms, new capabilities are being introduced, such as medianet, EnergyWise, TrustSec/Identity, Smart Install, and Auto Smartports. These capabilities further differentiate Cisco from its competitors. Cisco Prime LMS simplifies deployment of these new technologies through a new concept known as Work Centers. Work Centers provide a single consolidated user experience for the deployment and complete lifecycle management of new Cisco technologies.

Provides comprehensive device coverage: To manage a borderless network effectively, device coverage is essential, no matter where the device is located. Cisco Prime LMS provides support for more than 600 different Cisco hardware platforms, from an 800 Series Router to Cisco Nexus® switches, a CRS-1, and everything in between. No other product in the industry provides the breadth and depth of support for Cisco platforms. The Cisco Prime Day-one device support program helps to ensure that when a new platform ships from Cisco, manageability support in Cisco Prime LMS is available at the same time.

Complete lifecycle management: Maintaining and managing the many services associated with a borderless network require a good foundation for dealing with the core network infrastructure and day-to-day tasks associated with lifecycle management. Cisco Prime LMS provides the functionality required to perform the day-to-day tasks, including discovery, monitoring and troubleshooting, configuration and change management, autoremediation, and inventory and compliance reporting.

There is no specific hardware or software requirement for zone support. LMS works in the same way in non-global zones as it does in the global zone

LMS 4.1 also supports logical domains (LDOMs) and the ZFS file system

See the LMS 4.1 installation guide for more information on Solaris patches to be installed on these operating systems

NOTE: With the introduction of the Linux-based Virtual Appliance in this release, future releases of Cisco Prime LMS will no longer include support for Solaris operating systems. It is highly recommended that customers using the Solaris version of this product consider validating the Virtual Appliance version to facilitate future transition.

Cisco Prime LMS 4.1 is supported on the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) B-series blade servers (B200-M1 or M2 and B250-M1 or M2) and C-series rack-mount servers (C200-M1 or M2, C210-M1or M2, and C250-M1 or M2 and UCS C460). The server requirement on UCS blade servers and rack-mount servers remains the same as the server requirements on Windows systems.

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Warranty Coverage and Technical Service Options

Cisco Prime LMS 4.1 comes with the Cisco 90-day software warranty. Purchasing an application support service provides benefits not available with warranty including access to maintenance and minor updates, online resources, and Technical Assistance Center support services. Table 4 shows the technical services available for Cisco Prime LMS 4.1.